Neoplatonism
Tracing everything back to a principle beyond being, and making philosophy the path of return towards it.
c. 244 – c. 529
The name moderns give to the last great form of ancient , which opens with 's teaching in Rome from 244. His pupil edits his treatises as the . With and then the schools of Athens and Alexandria, the tradition becomes a systematic commentary on and , whom it holds to be in agreement. In the fifth century gives it its most architectonic synthesis, the . Yet the Neoplatonists part ways on decisive points: the part of the soul that would never descend into the body, defended by Plotinus and rejected by Iamblichus and Proclus; and the place of , the rites meant to unite the soul with the gods, alongside contemplation. The school's end is conventionally dated to 529, when Justinian banned pagan teaching in Athens; in Alexandria, teaching went on for a few more decades. Its thought passes into , into , into through the Theology of Aristotle, and then into the Renaissance with 's translation of Plotinus (1492).
The first principle is not the supreme being: lies beyond being and thought, and that is why it can ground everything.
Reality is a cascade: everything from the One by decreasing degrees, from to Soul and down to matter, almost non-being.
To live is to ascend: the meaning of a life is measured by the that turns it back towards its source.
Justification
Philosophy here is at once the science of principles and an exercise of purification. Commenting on Plato and practising the are two stages of one path, which 's hierarchy of virtues orders from the civic virtues up to the contemplative ones.
Porphyry, Sentences, 32 · Plotinus, Enneads, I.2
Justification
The movement by which things come forth reverses into a movement of return, . The soul, turned towards the body, has forgotten itself; it finds itself again by turning away from the sensible through the , which purify the soul of its attachments to the body, then through dialectic, up to with the One, which exceeds discursive thought itself. This detachment is not a renunciation of a worthless world: it fulfils what everything tends towards. reports that attained this union four times during the years he was with him. For and , reason alone is not enough for this ascent: is needed too.
Plotinus, Enneads, I.6 and VI.9 · Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 23 · Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, II.11
Justification
The argument starts from unity. Everything that is, is one; but , which thinks, is already double, subject and object. The principle must therefore precede this duality. takes up the 's claim that the Good lies beyond being and turns it into a thesis about the origin. All predication fails before the One: it can be designated only as the cause of what comes from it, or by negation, hence a that Christian theology would take up. pushes this to the extreme: the One lies even beyond the name "One".
Plotinus, Enneads, V.4 and VI.9 · Plato, Republic, VI, 509b · Proclus, Platonic Theology, II
Justification
answers the problem of how the many come from the One. What is perfect overflows without being exhausted, as light radiates from its source. Intellect arises from the One by turning towards it, and Soul from Intellect in the same way. This procession is outside time: it expresses dependence, not succession. Matter is the point where this power dies away, not a second principle: Neoplatonism is a spiritual monism, not a . The status of matter nonetheless varies by author: a sheer lack in Plotinus, it proceeds directly from the principle in Proclus.
Plotinus, Enneads, V.2 and II.4 · Proclus, Elements of Theology, props. 25-35
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Justification
If everything comes from the Good, evil cannot be a positive reality. identifies it with matter, the absolute of form, and defends a providence that orders the whole, as a playwright hands out unequal parts. rejects this identification: matter, which also issues from the principle, cannot be evil. He makes evil a parasitic existence, born of the failure of particular actions. Both readings share the same , transposed here from a creator God to a metaphysics of the Good: evil is a lack, not a principle.
Plotinus, Enneads, I.8 and III.2-3 · Proclus, On the Existence of Evils
Lineages
See on the friezeAll lineages↑ Influences received
- SynthesizesAristotelianismThe Neoplatonists built Aristotle's logic and physics into a curriculum leading to Plato, holding the two masters to be in agreement.Read
↓ Influence exerted
- transmitted byScholasticismNeoplatonism reached scholasticism through texts that concealed their origin: Pseudo-Dionysius, read as a disciple of Saint Paul, and the Liber de causis, ascribed to Aristotle, which Thomas Aquinas was among the firs…Read
- reinterpreted byRenaissance humanismIn Florence, Ficino translated Plato and then Plotinus (1492) and drew from them a Platonic theology of the soul; Pico della Mirandola took from them the idea of a concord of all wisdoms.Read
- reinterpreted byHegelHegel saw in Plotinus and above all Proclus the summits of ancient philosophy: their triad of remaining, procession and return foreshadows, in his eyes, the dialectical movement of Spirit, which he sought to think wit…Read